Recent reviews by MTesseracT

It's a fun game and I enjoyed most of it, but not without its faults.

First of all: Don't mistake my game time for actual time played. I got about 15 hours out of the full game with all secrets, expansions, golden skulls, etc. The other 115 hours are from trying to get the 66 hour achievement. Apparently the game uses a little secret in-game timer that only runs when you are playing the levels... would have been good to know, then I wouldn't have first waited 50+ hours on the main menu and then after it didn't work, I waited another 50+ hours in the first level, idling. Alas, none of that matters really.

But as for the game itself:

The story is barebones at best, but I don't think anyone is going into this with great expectations for the story. It works for its purpose and gives a bit of a thematic excuse for why it's in hell and there's metal playing.
The background music is really quite good and has some nice metal tracks that I found myself enjoying quite a bit. The rest of the sound is... okay. There's a few quips here and there which are okay. Bit Serious Sam-esque

If you are ultra competitive you will probably enjoy trying to get golden skulls and maybe high scores, some of the high scores are very suspicious though. However, there are some levels that have thresholds you need to get under that are simply not very fun to do (looking at you, B2) and might take you a few hundred tries.

For the most part, the game works fine, but there are some places here and there where movement doesn't feel... great. The jumping is a bit floaty and the hitboxes tend to not quite work as you'd expect sometimes, *especially* on moving level geometry, as if you keep some strange momentum that doesn't make much sense when you have air control and that you cannot cancel without landing. Jumping on slopes, especially if they move is almost random in terms of whether you will get some air or fall right into whatever is behind them.
I'm not sure if I'd recommend the expansions. The physics issues seem a lot more pronounced there and some levels really depend on you getting lucky with them, especially if you want to get those golden skulls.

Finally: Something I did quite enjoy was the great amount of secrets in the game. They range from collectibles to hidden QR codes (one of which reinforces my belief they took a bit of inspiration from Serious Sam) to other stuff. It's genuinely fun to find some of these accidentally.

In the end I did spend more time in the game than I had planned to, but the 15 hours I actively played I did enjoy a fair bit. :) Get the game on a sale though as it is kind of dated, and it's on sale often.

I'm a bit conflicted on if this should be recommended or not. But I feel I should because this definitive edition remaster does exactly what it sets out to do, but I want to touch on some things for people considering buying this game.

On one hand, it is probably the most faithful way to get the original AOE1 experience. It really seems to do a good job at that. So if a faithful remaster of your childhood game is what you are after and you want very little, minus the graphics, to be changed about it, this is the game you want to play.

On the other hand, the approach that the developers in remastering this title makes it quite clear why AOE1 is not the game that has most active players currently of the AOE series. When you are used to other games (AOE2 notably), it becomes painfully clear how badly some of the old engine features and design choices have aged.

Some of the most notable things are:
- Units are a royal pain to control. They don't form formations and unless you micro the absolute hell out of them, they will get stuck on just about everything (including each other) and not stay together.
- The AI plays in a very bizarre way, clearly having superhuman control over all of its units. For that reason assume you will never hit certain units with melee or long distance weapons (outside of bows) without getting them stuck in a corner or otherwise prevented from dodging/running away.
- Everything was made for 50 unit games. Back then, this was probably a choice made to give everyone, even those with really bad hardware, a chance to experience all of the game. Nowadays it makes everything feel very small scale and you feel like you are constantly interrupted by the pop cap limit.
- Many of the campaign missions frankly kind of suck. They come in a few flavours, but most commonly it feels like the equivalent of being stuck in the castle age in campaigns in AOE2. On occasion they have been remastered if the original was just too bad. Also there seem to be a few unintentional changes in the way the AI behaves that makes it even harder than intended. "The Holy Man" seems to be an example of this, becoming nearly unbeatable, while the rest of the Babylon campaign is easy.
- The balance is just non-existent.
- Many bits of QoL are missing.

If you are hoping for a smooth gameplay experience, steer clear and just play the Rise of Rome DLC for AOE2:DE. It seems to improve on things even further, without all of the jank present in this. After getting the achievements for this, I will likely not play it again, though I have enjoyed parts of the experience.

Really fun and addictive.
In my eyes it feels a bit like a combination of Hotline Miami and Cruelty Squad, but with a very unique identity. Exploring the maps is quite fun, since there's funny details hidden all over the place. The soundtrack is great and adds a nice rhythm to the gameplay, never expected to encounter hardcore/hardstyle in a video game like that. The game is also really polished.

My only criticism might be that some of the challenges are just too obnoxious. As in: they take long to set up and there's a good chance you end up losing the run in an instant near the end.

Used to really enjoy this, played it both on steam and on the EA client but now I cannot anymore since they just dropped support for linux out of laziness. Apparently because they are not capable of implementing anticheat that does not behave like spyware.

Great game with a lot to do. It has a pretty strong community with many regulars that have thousands of hours in the game.

There's a few little bugs which I suspect will be ironed out soon enough, but other than that it has been a great and very nostalgic experience.

Classic, good multiplayer, the campaign is also pretty decent save for a bug or two (like the underwater swimming section) and graphically it holds up pretty well till this day, assuming you have the hardware to max it out.

Very enjoyable. Combines some interesting gameplay elements together and has a very unique artstyle and soundtrack.
Can be a little buggy here and there, but nothing major that I've encountered at least.

Amazing game, bought it early and got a lot of playtime in before it moved to steam. Enjoyed every single minute of it though.
Great gameplay, very well optimized to go completely overboard with your factories, lots of fun mechanics, amazing modding community. I can only recommend it.

Its gud